3 Sons Restaurant
 Norton, Ohio        Date of Visit  10/01/12         http://3sonsrestaurant.com/ 

We might have been avoiding this one. We ate inside the building probably ten years ago. It was something different but the online reviews and last menu plus our previous experience have always given this restaurant the most likely to be visisted  by Gordon Ramsay or Robert Irvine on some "No one wants to eat here" t.v. show. Scary top to bottom. Well, we took one for the team and pulled into what is now 3 Sons Restaurant between lunch and dinner hours. The layout is the same but there have been some upgrades to the furniture and décor.
 

Cheese Nubs Distracted From Functional Salad
 

We stepped inside just as the blue hair parade was beginning to descend very slowly towards the doors. We started with the nachos and cheese which is described on the menu as instant gratification. The upside. Thin and crisp, still warm from the fryer with two full cups of orange sauce. The downside. The chips had the lightly burnt overcast of dirty fryer oil and the cheese sauce wasn’t very cheesy. Not even salty. Better than expected but still not writing home.

I ordered breakfast and Steph ordered lunch in diner form. Her dinner came with a side salad which consisted of lettuce, croutons and little square nubs of cheese. Not big squares, closer to 8th inch squares. The lettuce was fresh. The croutons were average. The dressings were fine. We have had worse but the little chewy and tasteless cheese flakes were confusing and pushed the salad down. It would have been better just clean when it was meager but functional.

 

Steph ordered the meatloaf dinner which the menu states is made from scratch using Choice Angus ground beef. Two slabs were served with mashed potatoes and gravy. The mash was horrible with a gravy rife with the taste of preservatives and little more. The meatloaf was better than the mash by far putting it just south of average. Beefy but lacking anything else what really helped the loaf was the blob of what at first appeared to be ketchup atop each piece. I’ve seen tomato related products cooked into the crest of loaves, I’ve seen loaves served with ketchup, I haven’t seen so much ketchup squeezed on by the kitchen. More fortunately the ketchup was mixed with something spicy, resulting in something saucier than a squeeze from a bottle.

Breakfast all day. The new menu advertized a number of Benedict versions from traditional, to corned beef, to Parisian with ham, mushroom and Swiss on a croissant, and so on. I settled on the Philly Steak Benedict.
 

Two English muffin halves topped with seasoned steak tips, peppers, onions, Pepper Jack cheese, two basted eggs, Hollandaise sauce and green onions. Okay so they have never been to Philly for a cheese steak. That’s forgivable and so was the breakfast. Passable Hollandaise, basted eggs that released a flood of warm yolk once breeched, tender enough beef, traditional veggies and cheese with a bite. I asked for hash brown well done and crispy. I’m glad I did for I would fear what they would have been ordered plain.

There was a great deal of negativity about the place online from nearly every angle. Rude and arrogant service. We didn’t see that. Not overly friendly or efficient but we saw none of the rudeness. The food is not good. It is below average but we have still had worse. Oh. I did order a piece of Old Fashioned Raisin Pie out of curiosity only to find the last piece had been served to someone without telling our server (the manager or owner, I think). He was the only one working while we were there. Strange. Well. So many other places to try. It'll be a while before we return.